Samar Fatany

This rigid
attitude has kept our country behind and continues to block our way to
progress. We need to work harder to create a consensus to support women in
leadership positions. The more we see
women in power the more people will get used to the fact that women are capable
leaders. However, recruiting women to run for a local office is still a real
challenge for our region. ....

Uri Avnery

Arab citizens
are deeply disappointed with the Jewish left, Jewish Leftists are afraid of
looking like “Arab-lovers” and anti-Zionists. The same has happened between the
Israeli peace movement and the Palestinians in the occupied territories.
Israeli leftists were afraid of looking unpatriotic. After Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination,
Palestinians felt that Israeli leftists were not much different from Israeli
rightists. .....

Abbas Nasir

Admittedly, it
is too early to say if making Mullah Omar's death public at this stage, when it
supposedly happened in April 2013, was aimed at making the militant movement
more amenable to negotiations or to thwart the talks.....

Zacky Umam

In 20 to 30
years, both organizations will be led by the current generation, the product of
intimate encounters between classical Islamic discourse and critical thinking,
along with an engagement in efforts to improve the social and economic
conditions of their communities. The
current generation has also had to deal with various influences, including that
of the capital-rich Wahhabism. ….

Hussein Ibish

If the Iran
nuclear deal was an earthquake shaking the Middle East’s strategic landscape,
one of the most dramatic aftershocks was the surprising arrival last month in
Saudi Arabia of a high-level delegation from Hamas. The visit by the Islamist
organization that rules Gaza is the latest sign of an about-face in Saudi
policy, which is now seeking a rapprochement with the regional Muslim
Brotherhood movement, to which Hamas belongs. Saudi Arabia has long been mistrustful
of the Brotherhood.....

Toygar Sinan Baykan

The vigilance
of the elites of the Islamist movement during the turbulent years of Turkish
democracy in the second half of 1970s protected Islamist organisations from
using violent means. The reward for the Islamist political entrepreneurs was a
less heavy-handed intervention in the Islamist movement and relatively
undamaged political and social networks throughout 1980s and 1990s. One can
also argue that there was a tacit approval of the Islamist politics by the new
establishment of Turkey at the beginning of 1980s as a panacea to leftist
movements. This, so to say, “selective pluralism” in Turkey created a virtual
consensus between systemic actors and the Islamist movement.....\

Hussain Nadim

The uneasy fact
is that Islam is in desperate need of internal reforms that have been delayed
to this point where the religion is being damaged from within causing serious
identity crisis amongst the Muslim youth. And it is this very identity crisis
that is at the core of radicalisation problem leading young Muslims to fall
prey to terrorist propaganda joining Islamic State and other militant groups.
As long as those at the helms of power in the Muslim community remain in
constant denial blaming the government, the "environment"......

Jamil Maidan Flores

In the end, the
biggest threat of the IS isn’t its pursuit of statehood but its cultivation of
a global constituency of alienated and intolerant Muslims, mostly young, who
assure the IS of an inexhaustible supply of fighters and operatives. Spread out
in 80 countries, these have been seduced by the viral promise of a paradisal
caliphate. If they can’t go to the Middle East to fight, they can wreak havoc
on their own societies.....

Louay Fatoohi

Of course, the
development of the Christian concept Just War did not ensure that the wars and
violence that Christians got involved met the definition and conductions of
that concept. The same applies to the war and violent acts that Muslims
conducted. But this schism between theory and practice applies to every concept
that the human being has ever used....

Prof. Henry Francis B. Espiritu, New Age Islam

“In the voyage towards the Divine, one who
travels without a guide needs two hundred years for a two days trip...
Patiently search for your spiritual master for without his leading, this
journey is filled with ordeals, hazards, and perils. Without the shelter of the
spiritual master, one cannot annihilate the lower self. Hold firmly to the
mantle of a genuine guide if you seek extermination of your deformed ego.”...

Abhishek Bhalla

Some Indian handlers have been
identified by intelligence agencies, which have tracked and intercepted youth
who had planned to leave for Turkey and then cross over to Syria to join ISIS. ISIS,
the dreaded terror group that has massacred thousands across the globe, has
headhunters in India and among Indians living abroad. They are recruiting young
Indian Muslims attracted to the idea of establishing a Caliphate. Some Indian
handlers have been identified by intelligence agencies, which have tracked and
intercepted youth who had planned to leave for Turkey and then cross over to
Syria to join ISIS.